joseph scissorhands: Sonia Delaunay: Rhythm and Colour

Sunday 20 June 2021

Sonia Delaunay: Rhythm and Colour

Sonia Delaunay - Projet de Couverture d'Album No.1, 1916

"The true new painting will begin when we understand that colour has a life of its own, that the infinite combinations of colour have their poetry and poetic language much more expressive than by the old means. It is a mysterious language related to vibrations, the very life of colour. In this field there are endless new possibilities." - Sonia Delaunay.

André Villers - Portrait of Sonia Delaunay, c.1975

A rather small, but nonetheless perfectly formed exhibition this, from a key figure in the Paris avante-garde and early pioneer of abstraction. The stark, white cube backdrop of Bastian's gallery is the perfect foil for Delaunay's vivid geometric abstractions which punctuate the space with little bursts of colour. Two pictures in, and my eyes were captivated by her couleurs. I found myself dancing a delicious waltz to Delaunay's rhythmes. Most of the works here are from Delaunay's Rythmes-Couleurs series, gouaches reproduced as pochoir prints published in 1966. Early in her career she collaborated with Robert Delaunay (who became her husband), and together they developed the theory of Simultanism - their theory of colour contrasts, in which they both abandoned figurative art for pure abstraction and colour. Their work also became known as Orphism. As was typical of many female artists in the history of art, Delaunay sacrified her early art career to support that of her artist husband whilst rearing their children. During this period Delaunay pursued a different creative direction producing some fantastic textile designs and clothing for firms such as Metz & Co. and Liberty, as well as founding her own Casa Sonia shop in Madrid, where her designs adorned surfaces as diverse as clothing, magazine covers and automobiles. It wasn't until after her husband's death that Delaunay resurrected and established her own career as a 'serious' artist/painter and began to gain a reputation of her own. Delaunay has been called the 'mother of abstraction' but art historical revisionism perhaps, has seen this accolade being accorded to fellow female artist Hilma Af Klint (here), who used her engagement in the practice of Spiritualism to create her own series of purely abstract paintings before even those of Kandinsky, which she instructed to be released many years after her death. The intimate works by Delaunay on display here at Bastian range from her early career, investigating colour and shape to her more mature developments in abstraction. I haven't seen any of Delaunay's work exhibited in London since the excellent retrospective at Tate Modern which I visited in 2015 (here), so this little exhibition served as a timely reminder of just how good (and influential) Delaunay's art is, and has been on current artists (myself included).